


Still delivers

by Icie



Category: Transistor (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 22:00:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8770969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icie/pseuds/Icie
Summary: An elaboration on the scene where Red and Boxer have a pizza date.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [singedsun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singedsun/gifts).



Red drapes his jacket over the hilt of the Transistor, like the weapon is a sophisticated coat hanger. She steps back, tilts her head, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth.

"Dressed me up for date night, huh?" he says, and she covers her mouth, stifling a giggle.

In some ways this is like a thousand nights they've had before.The two of them with a pizza between them, Red managing to look elegant as she taunts him by claiming the largest slice for herself. 

"That one should be mine," he says. She winks, and raises the slice to dangle the trailing string of cheese down onto her tongue. He would swallow, if he had a throat. "Hey, no fair."

It occurs to him, for the thousandth time that night, that he loves her. 

It's one of those facts that seems as natural as breathing. Something he doesn't do anymore. He'll have to work on that thought, but the point is, his love for her comes easily. Everything she does makes it overflow, he feels like he should overload every second he's in her company. Her smile, her gestures when she wants to communicate something more than just her words will allow, the way she hums just to let the music out of herself when she isn't doing anything else. He'll stay with her, he thinks, as long as he can.

"Red," he says, imagining himself resting against her from behind, wrapping his arms around her and placing a kiss on her cheek, just to make her laugh. "Don't leave me behind."

Her eyes go soft as she glances down at him. She has threads of cheese running from her mouth to the slice, and still looks unfairly beautiful.

"I know," he says. "Just checking."

She reaches out and paints a stripe of grease down the handle of the Transistor, then tilts it to an angle that she might classify as jaunty.

"Hey hey, you're putting your date in an uncomfortable position here."

She winks. She sucks the fingers of her right hand clean — or close enough — as she picks up a second piece of pizza with her left. She hasn't finished up the crust of her first slice. That was always his job.

She picks up a pen from her collection of them at the far side of the table, and tests it, scribbling on a corner of the pizza box. The pen refuses to give up its ink, so she pulls another one from the jar.

This one writes well enough, and she scrawls out a note, her handwriting elegant but barely legible.

I couldn't ask for better company for my last meal.

He laughs in a wry chuckle. "Who knows, maybe when we track down those Camerata bastards they'll offer us a drink." Red stuffs altogether too much pizza into her mouth, and her cheeks puff out to accommodate it. He'd think she was doing it to avoid speaking, if she could speak, and if he didn't know that's just how she likes to eat the things she enjoys. She's an elegant kind of woman, but only when she chooses to be. "'Sides," he continues, "you'll have plenty more meals than this."

She doesn't respond to his words this time. 

Another piece of pizza disappears, the grease from it making her red lips shine. He thinks it's funny how something like eating a pizza — not the classiest activity there is — can still make her look more beautiful. 

From what he can tell, their tangles with the Process haven't taken any toll on her. Her voice is gone, but that was the Camerata, same as his current predicament. Just like he's a guy in a sword, she's a singer without a voice. 

She hums as she begins her third piece of pizza. Seems like she's going for the gold and finishing the whole thing. Which he can't blame her for — fighting is easier when you've had a good meal in living memory. This night feels like it's gone on for an eternity. He joins in with her tune — he knows this one. It's one of her early songs. He thinks she might have sung it the night he first saw her.

He likes to think he adds something here, a support, a comfort to her, even if his voice could never hope to overturn hers in the charts.

As they hum together, she turns it into a game, delving into elaborate melodies as he stumbles to keep up. Sometimes he can follow what she's doing, slipping between different pieces of her work, other times she's creating on the fly and leaving him floundering in her wake. 

"Alright, I give!" he says, breaking out of his hum with a chuckle.

She smirks, eyes twinkling and setting down the crust. She holds up a finger, and makes a circle with the other hand.

"Fine, one : nothing. You got me," he says. "Pretty sure it's more like a million : nothing, but I'll give you the difference."

Her eyes twinkle more in agreement. She's always known who's got the power between them. Not that he minds.

"Thanks, by the way," he says. "For the sea monster."

She licks a finger, before putting it right back on the pizza. 

"Not much point to that, Red." She doesn't care.

The rest of the pizza goes down easy, leaving a ring of crusts in the box. "You might try them," he says, "they look pretty tasty to me."

She tips the crusts into the garbage and flicks the tabs of the box out to flatten it. The box goes with the rest of the paper to recycle, tucked behind the door in a green bin. Always conscious of the environment, his girl.

"I love you," he says. No response.

She washes her hands and scrubs them clean. If he didn't know better he'd think that she was reluctant to leave. But she's not. She's just busy thinking five steps in advance, and her feet haven't quite caught up yet.

She takes his coat off the Transistor, and gathers it up to her nose for a second, inhaling deeply, then hanging it back where it belongs, keeping her safe. She presses a kiss to the handle of the blade, like she's bestowing it on the tip of his nose like she used to when she was awake in the morning and he was still naked in her bed. She cradles the weapon to her chest, breathing in again, like there's any trace of his scent on the metal. Though, hey, for all he knows there, might be.

"Yeah," he says, because he thinks he gets it. "Me too."

She drags the Transistor behind her as she leaves. She locks herself out. She doesn't think they'll be coming back.


End file.
